Deception (14 page)

She faced forward again.

The bazaar was divided into a series of halls, with each hall focusing on a specific type of merchandise. As she moved down the main concourse—swept along by the tide of tourists and locals, hardly in control of her direction—she caught glimpses of corridors lined with silver, corridors lined with turquoise, corridors lined with hanging carpets. A crucial question came to mind: Did the corridors open onto separate exits, or did they terminate in dead ends? There was one way to find out, of course. But if the man followed her and it turned out to be a dead end …

… at least it was a chance.

She ducked to her right, nearly toppled a boy carrying a tray of sweet apple tea, then dodged a man balancing a pile of carpets on his head. For an instant, she considered entering a hallway lined with musical instruments: the narrow fiddle called
Kemençe
, the cylindrical
Zurna.
But the corridor was popular, and crowded. She chose a slightly less crowded hallway across the way, and took off.

The hallway featured brass: brass chessboards with pieces modeled on characters from
Lord of the Rings
, brass hookahs with aromatic incense burning in clay trays. For a crazy moment, some old part of her, the shopping part, wanted to pause and buy something. She could stop and haggle with one of these vendors, and perhaps she would blend in so naturally that the man behind her would simply pass her by. Shopping, after all, was her natural state.

Then she was approaching a stall that broke ranks from its neighbors by featuring silks, and the idea began to seem less crazy. She saw veils, hanging in rows beside gowns, robes, and a neon sign advertising
Coca-Cola/Budweiser/Marlboro.
Once donned, a veil would cover everything but her eyes.

The shopkeeper stepped forward to intercept her. “
Française
?” he said.

Hannah managed a smile. “
Non, américaine.
”

“
Mais vous parlez bien le français.
”

It was a prearranged speech, which no doubt flattered Middle American housewives to no end. She kept the smile on her face, reaching out to finger one of the silk scarves. “How much?” she asked.

“
Kaç lira
? Or American dollars?”

“Dollars, please.”

Tourists streamed past, elbowing her rudely. She held her purse tighter and kept her eyes locked on the shopkeeper. If the man had seen her turn down the corridor, if he had followed, then he would be drawing near. “For you—twenty dollars.”

“And with the—” She waved at one of the robes. What were they called in this part of the world? “How much with this?”

“That is my finest product. One hundred dollars. But for you? Eighty dollars with the yashmak. Because I like your face.”

“Can I try them on?”

He showed a mouthful of blackened teeth, and took the yashmak and robe from their rack.

Hannah let the man help her slip into the silks, transferring her purse from her right hand to her left in the process. He must have felt the wet on her clothes. But he already would have seen that her hair was damp. Would he make a comment?

He did not. No doubt he had seen even stranger things, from American tourists on vacation in Istanbul.

“Very nice,” he said, as he draped the yashmak over her hair. “A natural fit. As if it was made for you.”

“Really?”

Someone passed by again, jostling the arm with the purse; she ignored it.

“So natural that I will lower the price: seventy-five dollars.”

“Have you got a mirror?”

He swept an arm into the booth, cordially. She took a step forward and saw a glass mounted on the stall's back wall. She moved closer, wrapping the yashmak more tightly over her face. As she pretended to study her reflection, she stared at the corridor behind her.

The man who was following her was there.

4.

Had he been mistaken?

He could have sworn he had caught a glimpse of the woman slipping down this hallway. But he was within sight of the end—the corridor terminated abruptly in a grate before a wall of what looked like limestone. And he had not seen the woman.

He turned around again, frustrated. The hallways were a labyrinth; he found himself disoriented. Perhaps he should go back to the mouth of the Old Bazaar, and wait for her to make a reappearance. Or perhaps she had found some other exit, and he would just be wasting his time. If only the goddamned cell phone had been working, he could have called for backup. But no; he was on his own.

Around him, the Turks hawked their merchandise. An overweight American was arguing with one. “But I don't have anyplace to
put
a lamp,” he was saying doubtfully. In the next stall, a woman was admiring her reflection in a mirror as she tried on the local uniform. Hardly an inch of her skin was exposed.

Keyes raised a hand to his temple. If only he'd slept more on the flight, and was thinking more clearly …

“At these prices,” the American was being told, “what does it matter?”

Then Keyes began to move back toward the main corridor. She had not come down this hallway after all, he decided. This was a fool's errand. He was looking for a needle in a haystack.

But a feeling was with him: eyes burning into his back.

He was missing something, wasn't he? Yes. But what? The woman
had
come down this corridor. He had not imagined it. And then she had—

—stopped to buy a disguise.

He turned again.

The woman before the mirror was there, a dozen feet away, reaching into her pocketbook.

5.

“Seventy-five dollars,” Hannah repeated.

It was highway robbery. No doubt the man had expected her to bargain him down to half that price—but she didn't have the time. She reached into her purse.

And found that her wallet was missing.

Her tongue came out and slipped over her lips. The book was there; her passport was there; her change of clothes was there. But the wallet was gone. When she had been jostled, she thought. That was when the pickpocket had struck.

She looked back up at the vendor and smiled weakly. “Oh dear,” she started. “I'm afraid—”

Then a hand closed around her wrist, hard.

It was the man from customs—digging his fingers into her flesh with enough force to bruise. But he seemed at a loss for what to do next. If he dragged her away physically, how would the vendor react? Instead he wavered, holding on to her wrist with his right hand, his left coming up and then pausing.

Hannah had time to gather a hasty impression of the man. Late forties, slightly paunchy, with an intense cast to his features. He wore dark slacks and a white dress shirt with heavy sweat stains under the arms. He was not like any government agent she had imagined. He was an office worker, she thought—a bureaucrat. Who was this man, and what was he doing here, harassing her?

The vendor was watching nervously. Hannah reached out and grabbed the arm of her harasser, even as he held on to hers. They held each other and she turned to the vendor and said, very calmly, “This man has stolen my wallet.”

The vendor looked away.

But now another man was coming forward—the overweight American who had been bargaining over the lamp. “Why don't you take your hand off the lady?” he asked.

Still the bureaucrat hesitated. “This man took my wallet,” Hannah said again, louder.

“Pal,” the tourist said. “Take your hands off her. All right?”

Now another group was moving in their direction—Europeans, on the young side, hardly more than teenagers. “Is problem?” one asked.

“It's under control,” the American said. “If this gentleman would just let the lady go …”

The man let go of Hannah's arm; but she kept holding on to his. “He took my wallet. And he's been following me.”

The teenagers were surrounding them in a loose circle. The man shook his head, and finally found his voice. “This woman is a fugitive. There's—”

“You got her wallet, buddy?”

“No, no. I represent a—”

“You wouldn't mind emptying your pockets, would you?”

Hannah let go and took a step away. The vendor's eyes followed her—she was still wearing the silks. When she realized the source of his concern, she immediately pulled off the yashmak and handed it back, then went to work on unwrapping the robe.

Now the bureaucrat was looking defensive. His eyes darted from the American to the teenagers, then fell on Hannah. For an instant, she saw something smoldering beneath the defensiveness—hot anger.

She finished peeling off the robe, and handed it to the vendor.

“Don't look at her,” the American instructed. “Look at me. Let's see what's in your pockets.”

“Sir. You don't—”

“I'm not going to ask again.”

Suddenly, the bureaucrat's face turned agreeable, conciliatory. “Sir,” he repeated. “I understand how this might look to you. But believe me, you don't have all the—”

Hannah slipped away.

She felt the bureaucrat lunging after her; and she felt the teenagers moving to restrain him. A final glance over her shoulder revealed that the American had his hand on the bureaucrat's shoulder now. She hurried off.

“—asked twice already. I warned you—”

Back past the
Lord of the Rings
chessboard, the incense-burning brass hookahs; then back into the main hall. A trio of blue-suited policemen was moving past her, the designation
emniyet
sewn onto their uniforms. They turned down the hall from which she had come, running toward voices still gaining in volume.

Then the crowd picked her up like so much driftwood, sweeping her back toward the main entrance.

THIRTEEN

1.

For as long as he could remember, Francis Dietz's eyes had drawn comment.

His mother, rest her soul, had praised their acuity and exceptional clarity. His schoolmates had praised their unique grayish hue. The agents he had run in New York had commented first on their quickness, and, as time had passed, on their unnatural depth—his eyes, more than one person had said, seemed to go on forever.

In the years since New York, his eyes had continued to change.

Now they no longer went on forever. Now they closed off after one penetrated any distance into them, driving the invader in a different direction, like a hall of mirrors. Behind the hall of mirrors, Dietz supposed, his eyes still went on forever. That was why he could see so much that others missed. But over the years he had learned to cover this look—to keep the interlopers out and keep his secrets for himself.

Dietz had many secrets.

Now, as his eyes flicked across the quay, Dietz saw many things.

He saw that something had gone wrong. Keyes had been gone for only six minutes, but intuition told Dietz that the man was not coming back any time soon. Somehow the woman had pulled something, and somehow Keyes had gotten pulled along with her. Because she was not working alone, Dietz thought. A single woman couldn't have pulled Keyes away without some kind of help.

And he saw something else. He saw it in the face of the chief security officer of the
Aurora II
, a Turk named Yildirim. Yildirim's eyes were sleepy, but beneath the lassitude was something else, something guilty and cagey.

Just intuition. But intuition had served Dietz well over the years. He had learned to trust it.

He stood in the customs office, betraying none of his suspicions, coolly watching the man named Yildirim through the frosted-glass window.

2.

The disembarkation went on for two and a half hours.

At last, the final passenger had been put into a car and sent to the hotel. The customs officials mused over clipboards, perhaps discussing the whereabouts of a single missing passenger, a young woman named Victoria Ludlow. Leonard milled around the outskirts of the cluster of men, trying to overhear snatches of conversation while looking as if he belonged there.

Chief Security Officer Yildirim was talking with the customs officers. He was shrugging. He looked angry and tired and frustrated. But his eyes and his body language betrayed something else: hidden secrets, and impatience to get away.

Dietz watched, taking it all in.

Presently, Leonard came back into the office. He moved to Dietz and said in a low voice, “Where the fuck is Keyes?”

Dietz glanced down, at the top of the little man's head. He was fond of Leonard. God had played a terrible joke on the man, but Dietz had not seen him manifest a trace of self-pity. Leonard reminded Dietz of the type of man he had been surrounded by when he had been a part of the agency. Men of purpose; men with backbone. Lately, he had not been surrounded by men like this. Lately, he had spent most of his time by himself: hiding on his farm, soaking in self-pity.

“This is fucked up,” Leonard went on. “What are we supposed to do now?”

Dietz considered. “You'll wait here,” he said. “In case Keyes shows up.”

“What about you?”

“I'll be back. Keep an eye out. She may have found a hiding place on board, and plans to slip off in the middle of the night.”

Leonard looked at him for a moment more, and seemed on the verge of asking something else. But he held his tongue. A good man, Dietz thought, who knew when to ask questions and when to keep his mouth shut. In this case, although Leonard didn't know it, he was very possibly saving his own life by keeping his mouth shut. If Leonard got in his way, despite any affection Dietz may have felt for the man, then he would pay the price.

Yildirim was still conferring with the customs officials—but things looked as if they were wrapping up. Dietz reached into the leather bag that never left his shoulder. His fingers slipped past the hidden compartment, which contained passports and driver's licenses for several false identities, both male and female. By touch, he checked his wallet, the gun, the suppressor. His eyes never left Yildirim.